Thursday

Oct 24, 2019 at 5:30 AMOct 24, 2019 at 6:34 AM

Whether the Blue Jackets like it, and they don’t, their first order of business is to prove that they can generate enough offense without Artemi Panarin. To that end, it may be that Gustav Nyquist’s winning overtime goal in Toronto on Monday night was a turning point. More on that in a second.

It is one thing to think of Panarin as Leon Trotsky, and to insist that he, as one man, is not a movement. It is quite another thing to replace the Blue Jackets' most dynamic player, and the 1.06 points per game he provided over his two seasons with the team.

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Panarin may be out of sight in Mexico City, or New York, or wherever he is, but he was not out of mind over the weekend. The Jackets lost two overtime games — in Chicago to the Blackhawks on Friday night and at home against the New York Islanders on Saturday night — and their fans, at least, could feel Panarin’s absence like a phantom limb.

The Jackets looked like the 1980 Soviet national team for stretches in those games. But they had trouble finishing and came away with two points when they could have, should have, had four. Their margin for error was the width of a razor cut.

Coach John Tortorella is not crazy when he says that, outside of a 30-minute lapse of patience in Pittsburgh, the Jackets have played uniformly solid hockey. Yet, coming out of the weekend they were next-to-last in the league in goals per game (2.1), and the back-to-back OT losses appeared like dark portents.

As Tortorella noted, the Jackets needed wild-card entries to get into the playoffs the previous two seasons. One reason they got the cards was by picking up precious points in games that went beyond regulation: They were 17-6 in OT games and 10-4 in shootouts with Panarin.

It is likely they will need these shinny points even more this season. They are one of the youngest teams in the league, playing with a more defensive bent. Their past seven games have been decided by one goal. There are many more to come.

Nyquist’s overtime winner — on a penalty shot — brought palpable relief Monday. The Jackets signed Nyquist to help fill the hole left by Panarin, and here was some weighty filling. The victory — on the road, against a team that had spanked them on opening night — sounded a high note at the end of a span of four games in six days. With the victory, the Jackets lifted their record above .500.

“I just hope that, as a team, we believe in what we are doing,” general manager Jarmo Kekalainen said before the Toronto game. “We’ve got to believe — because we’re playing well. The finishing touch is not quite there, but if we keep playing like this, it’ll come. We’re going to go on a run at some point.”

The Jackets have been a solid five-on-five team under Tortorella, with and without Panarin. They have scored between 193 and 231 goals at even strength in each of the previous four seasons. They had the seventh-most even-strength goals in 2016-17, the season before Panarin arrived.

That is one of three primary reasons Kekalainen is not hellbent to trade for a scorer, not at this point.